Year’s First Storm Takes on Drought, Doesn’t Measure Up

The first storm of the new millennium passed through Orange County on Tuesday, filling flood-control channels with runoff and making wind chimes jingle but barely affecting the area’s yearlong drought.

“It didn’t make much of a dent--sorry,” said Amy Talmage, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “If I could have made the rain harder, I would have.”

The storm was caused by the collision of moisture from the tropics near Hawaii with a surface cold front that was moving east across the Pacific. The warm air collided with the cold front off the Central California coast, bringing rain or snow to most of the state.

The storm dumped 0.33 of an inch of rain on Santa Ana from 3 a.m. until about 1 p.m., Talmage said, coming down steadily after 5 a.m. Rainfall elsewhere in Orange County included 0.3 of an inch in Laguna Beach, 0.28 of an inch in El Toro and 0.2 of an inch in Dana Point.

After brief showers late Tuesday, the storm moved on. “It’s not coming back to your area,” Talmage said.

Tuesday’s showers brought the season’s total in Santa Ana to 0.61 of an inch, only a small fraction of the average of 6.23 inches by this date, Talmage said. Last year’s rainfall to date, she said, was 3.5 inches.

Skies are likely to be clear for the rest of the week, Talmage predicted, with daytime highs from the mid-60s to the low 70s. There is a slight chance of more rain next Tuesday. Despite making pavement slippery, the storm caused minimal disruptions in traffic, said a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.